The Good Fight 4: Homefront

by Ian Thomas Healy

  My eyes, on the other hand, are now centered on the cement truck. The door is open and two men from the sudden crowd of vehicles are climbing up to help the meat inside to get out of the cab.

  I can smell their fear when they wrench open the door, and although I would normally glory in it, theirs is different. It’s the fear of what they will find, and that doesn’t taste as good.

  They’re shouting now, and others are running to help them. One reaches inside and starts to drag. I can feel the death’s-head grin stretching my face. The muscles in my legs tense in preparation for the leap and run that will take me past them all. This meat nearly killed my girl. If he turns out to be drunk, I’m gonna peel his flesh, take him right to the edge, leave his soul hanging by one tattered thread, and spit in his eyes before I—

  “Get an ambulance!” the man shouts from within the cab. “He’s not breathing!”

  Behind me I hear Mara spit a curse. She runs toward the dead fool.

  Rather than discuss her triage and the fact that she abandoned my daughter for a cooling corpse, I simply turn and take Gina in my arms again.

  “Thanks,” I say to the suit. “There’s money in my wallet if you need it.”

  He looks at me, his mouth falling open to reveal blindingly white teeth.

  “Say what? No, I don’t need money, Mister. I just came to help.”

  “In my world, people who help get rewarded.”

  “Helping is its own reward.”

  He’s one of those. Great. I stretch back the lips and give him a smile that rides a razor between grateful and psychotic.

  “Then I thank you again,” I say, nodding my head in an approximation of a bow.

  In the distance, I can hear the warbling of approaching sirens. Cops. I really don’t want to deal with them, but I know what’s coming.

  Or so I thought.

  There’s a thunderous roar as Photon jets downward, arresting his descent with those stupid-ass cosmic rays and landing light as a feather. The lights in the area glint off his gold outfit. Seriously, man? Gold? With that logo over the left breast that looks like some lead-paint-eating kid got hold of a finger painting kit, and the glowing white LEDs surrounding the eyes of his mask. Your suit designer was deeply damaged.

  “Stand easy, citizens!” he calls out in his deep voice. Some news monkey described it once as ‘stentorian’, which apparently means ‘really loud and as annoying as a neighborhood visit from people wanting to spread the Good Word’ or some such. Anyway, here he is, standing there with his hands on his hips and trying to look important. Boy looks like a blinged-out Academy Award with an inflated ego.

  A couple of the crowd rush to tell Photon what’s happened and what’s going on. He follows their pointed fingers to look at me, standing with my daughter in my arms and blood dripping down the left side of my head. With a nod to the speakers he takes three long strides, doing his best to look regal as he marches.

  “How’d a pussy like you luck into those abilities?” I ask as he gets closer. The question is definitely not what he expected, and he stumbles to a halt, his boots skidding a little in a puddle spilled transmission fluid.

  “I’m, uhh, excuse me?” he stutters.

  “Go grandstand somewhere else, hero. I don’t like your type.”

  “Well, now, I was just trying to—”

  “You a doctor?”

  “No?” he says, making it sound like a question.

  “Mechanic? Road repairman? Cop? Firefighter? Tow truck driver?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “You aren’t needed,” I say, fairly spitting the words at him. “You stinking Metas come in and try to get your damned pictures in the papers and shit. Not here, you got it? Not here. You leave me and my girl alone!”

  I stomp my foot in mock anger as I shout the last, remembering to hold back rather than punch a hole through the street. It’s never helpful to pretend you hate powered folks if they see you’re one of them.

  He looks shocked but turns and quick-marches his way to where Mara is riding the chest of the dead guy, rocking his heart with all her strength in some attempt to bring him back. He’s still there when the first ambulance rounds the corner.

  I’m there as soon as the doors open in the back, lifting Gina and stepping into their rig as if I owned the thing. I lay her on the cot and reach for the restraint strap. The medic is looking at me like I’ve grown another head.

  “Wanna help me strap her in or do I just drive this heap to the hospital without you?”

  He shakes his head and starts helping me. It’s a good thing. I’ve been astoundingly polite so far, but I’m well past the bluffing stage.

  We’re on the road soon, siren blaring overhead while red and blue lights bounce off the surrounding buildings in strobelike patterns. Whoever the driver actually is, he’s pretty good.

  “You got anything for a headache in here?” I ask the medic in the back with me. He’s got a stethoscope thing in his ears, checking Gina, and doesn’t hear me. Oh well, we’re going to a hospital. Surely someone there can help me. I’d rather he focus on her anyway. I heal, and usually pretty quickly.

  “Dad?” Gina mumbles, her eyes rolling around but open. I’m there before medic-boy can even react, leaning over her and smiling into her face.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “We’re going to a hospital.”

  “It hurts,” she says. Her voice is plaintive and there are tears running from her eyes. The drilling sound is coming back now but softer than it was, and I look into her eyes. It wasn’t there while she was unconscious.

  I turn a ferocious gaze on the medic. “Go faster,” I order him, the words rolling out on top of a deep growl from within my chest. He relays the command through a microphone, and I can hear the driver protest but also feel it as he accelerates.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I tell Gina. “This man is going to take care of you.”

  I step back to let him do his thing, but stay where she can see me. Maintaining my footing in the back of this truck is no real task, even with the way it weaves through traffic. I reach past him as he’s wiring up some kind of thing and snatch a couple of gauze pads. They’re handy at wiping away the blood from my head and mostly clearing the left eye. There’s a minor bleed in there, I think. It’ll get better within the hour.

  Saint Mary’s Hospital is close to the house, and sure enough, that’s where the wheelman brings us. Good. Gina’s records are on file here already. I wonder when they’re gonna give her the Engelberg. The sound is in my head still, but it’s not the bitter power it was earlier. This is a new feeling, more of a beacon, and I think it might be her.

  I’m out the door before the medic, reaching up to take one end of the cot even as the driver is still coming back to us. He’s a thinly-built man, barely a couple inches taller than Gina, but he’s got that “I know what I’m doing and it doesn’t involve letting some idiot citizen take hold of my patient” look to him. He says as much, although more politely.

  I follow them in and listen as they babble all the statistics and abbreviations to the nurse that’s waiting in the Emergency Department. The medic from the back points at me and identifies me as a second patient, and there’s suddenly a new nurse in my face. Her questions are getting between me and Gina.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. “I’ll sign a waiver or pay you cash or whatever, but that’s my kid your partners are hauling away, and she ain’t getting out of my sight.”

  She seems amazed as I step past her and continue following the cot into the tiny room they have taken Gina into. It’s not until the medic who was driving the ambulance approaches me that I even give ground, and only then because he reminds me the staff is going to have to take off Gina’s clothes to examine her.

  “I’ll be outside, baby,” I say. “You need me, you call. I will come for you.”

  She manages a smile through the pain and gives me a weak thumbs-up.

  The medic leads me out and I find myself f
illing out reams of paperwork. The numbers and responses come as if by rote, which is not unexpected. I’ve filled out all these kinds of forms before. I turn the clipboard in to the scrawny kid with the dull expression and mention that Gina has been here before. They promise to find her records and I’m just left to stand there.

  It sucks.

  I’m the heaviest hammer in this whole place, and yet I’m powerless to do anything. This must be what it’s like to be a norm. The urge to go break something is right there, but I know it’s a bad plan.

  I give the monkey behind the counter my cell number. He tells me how to get to the cafeteria and says they will call when I can come back.

  Hospitals all have the same smells. There’s fear and hope and joy and blood and puke and shit and death and antiseptic and perfume and sweat and it is all a familiar thing that never really changes. It’s all around me now, wrapped around my shoulders like a wet wool blanket.

  I’m not going to get away from it any time soon. The farther I walk from the ER, though, the less I have the sound in my head. The headache is still there, pounding like Minotaur was earlier, but the noise is gone. It’s her. She’s a broadcaster, maybe? Probably turn out to be a psion of some kind. Great. Watch her want to play the hero. Kid’ll wind up turning me in.

  The cafeteria is actually better than I expected. Not the dingy, dim joints I’ve seen in other hospitals, but well-staffed and well-maintained. There’s the usual confusing multiple aisles of approach that all lead to you passing by food and drink of various kinds and then angling you toward the cashiers. I grab the biggest coffee I can find, and some kind of sandwich thing with visible meat. The register makes a tiny little digital ‘ding’ sound that I just know has got to drive the gray haired woman behind it absolutely insane. I hand her a hundred for the food and tell her to keep the rest for the next few staff that come through. It’s money. Not like I don’t just go get it when I want it.

  The only empty spot is near a table full of nurses and other staff, all chattering to one another. I try my best to tune them out and concentrate on my coffee. It doesn’t work.

  “. . . makes me wanna jump him,” one of them is saying. It takes a half second for my brain to remind me she isn’t talking about an ambush.

  The red-haired one continues on to her cohorts, telling them how she wants someone named Joaquin to father her children and how they’ll have a wonderful family if she can only get him to open up and admit what he wants and I’m begging my ears to stop working at all as they giggle. I unwrap the sandwich, focusing on listening for the sounds of the plastic wrap to drown out the conversation. When that doesn’t work I force myself to wide-band it, letting in every sound in the room in a constant torrent.

  Which is when it all starts to go downhill.

  Listening to everything at once, allowing in everything at once, gives me a bit of every conversation, every grinding noise behind the counter, and not least of all, the crackling of a security radio reporting a disturbance at the ER. Some idiot demanding drugs. I see two guys in security uniforms jump up from a table and start for the hall.

  I pick up my food and follow. There’s an attractive young guy in scrubs headed my way, with a name tag that says, ‘Joaquin H.’ I shake my head at him in warning.

  “Avoid the redhead, pal,” I say as we pass. “She’s got the baby rabies.”

  Doing my part.

  The sandwich is roast beef, good but dry, and I remember seeing the little packets of mayo and mustard back there. Should have snagged them. I keep tailing the sec boys, gripping a tall cup of coffee in my right hand as I shove the roast beef into my face with all the subtlety of a plasma cannon. I’ve got to look like someone who hasn’t eaten in a year, but the food helps fuel the reactor inside that makes the regeneration work, or something like that. I don’t know how it works, just that it does, and my Burrito Max meal didn’t survive the crash. You make do with what you can.

  The trip back to the ER is quicker and smoother than the trip away. Being behind the bought-badges gets me there without having to remember the route I took in the first place. As we near, I duck into an alcove and let them go ahead. I can already hear the commotion.

  I let the change come, feeling the shift in my skin as the face sinks and pulls back from the teeth. My vision morphs from the normal spectrum and I add a few more layers of weirdness to the colors I can see. Fingertips split and hardened claws come out of them, strong enough to scar stone. I peel off the shirt and rip free the hat, shoving them into a trash can. Denim jeans are a dime a dozen, so they’re no issue. I pick the coffee back up from the floor and set out at a jog, the overhead fluorescents glinting from the notebook paper paleness of my exposed skin. Two dozen steps and I’m back behind Mutt and Jeff.

  There is a small crowd near the front reception area, and they’re playing a nice game of rotating positions. It’s a good way to keep the idiot confused as to who is where, and it allows them to keep a group between him and the patients. There is one other security guard coming around a corner from the other side, and my two escorts moving in make three.

  I can see the idiot in question, ranting and raving, pacing back and forth while his left hand smacks repeatedly at the side of his own head. His right hand is jammed in the deep pocket of his overcoat, and I’m willing to bet he’s got a blade or a banger in there, with his grubby mitt wrapped around it and waiting for the first staffer dumb enough to put a hand on him.

  Yep. I should put bets down on my intuition. Revolver, blued and snubby. The crowd suddenly backs up, hands raised as voices try to convince Junkie Boy to drop the weapon. Two of the sec men are moving to get closer, while the third is on a cell phone, probably calling for the locals to come help.

  “Hey there, streetmeat,” I call out, striding toward him with a purposeful gait. My right arm draws back. One of the sec men turns to look at me even as Junkie Boy does. He shouts a warning as I fling the cup.

  “It’s the Wight!” the badge yells, hand pawing at his belt for a sidearm he isn’t carrying, Off-duty cop, maybe? Oh, well. Not my problem yet.

  The cup sails past the guard and hits Junkie Boy in the middle of his dirty, pock-marked face. Twenty ounces of scalding coffee blast from the cheap styrofoam container, covering his face and making him scream in sudden pain.

  The guard on the cell phone is shouting at whoever is on the other end that I’m here.

  Junkie Boy keeps screaming and waves the arm with the pistol in my general direction, but I’ve already closed the distance and I’m on him.

  Inside his guard before he can even get the rusty little .38 pointed, I grab it by the cylinder and twist, breaking his trigger finger and ripping the weapon from his grasp. Right hand up, grabbing his hair, pulling back and down. Shin kick to the back of his left knee takes out the support structure and he’s falling, limp weight in my hand. I don’t give him the chance to react. I drive my fist, still holding the revolver, into his gut while reversing the direction of my pull and swinging him forward. He pivots over the weighted fist in his stomach and face plants onto the floor. At least he shut up.

  I draw back a foot to kick, but then I remember that any damage I do to him, these folks have to fix and that’s longer they’ll take to help Gina.

  I point a long, bony finger toward the guard who recognized me. My voice is a graveyard hiss as I speak.

  “Stand aside, meat. My meal awaits.”

  It’s handy sometimes to have a street rep that says you eat people. Makes other people quick to do what you want.

  One step. I make one lousy step toward the door, dragging the unconscious idiot behind me, when the front doors swing open to reveal a field of gleaming gold.

  “Your time has come, Wight!” Photon shouts.

  Never a dull moment, it seems. Maybe after I stomp him into the floor, someone will get me a damned aspirin.

  -~o~-

  A founding member of the Pen and Cape Society, T. Mike McCurley writes adventure fiction in diff
erent veins, but the superhero tale has long been a favorite. His serial Firedrake has been collected into a trio (so far) of books, with several others rounding out his super-verse. You can find his works at www.amazon.com/author/tmikemccurley and even more by going to www.tmikemccurley.com for his website.

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  Coming Out as Leonel: A Menopausal Superheroes Side Story

  Samantha Bryant

  David looked nervous, but Marisol didn’t feel sorry for him. Clearly, the man was up to something. It had been weeks since anyone had seen his wife, and the explanation that made the most sense was that David had done something to her. She no longer believed that Linda was sick or that she’d gone on a trip. She hadn’t really believed it even then. Linda usually told her everything. She’d have known about it if her best friend was leaving town.

  When he called this little meeting of all of Linda’s friends in the neighborhood, Marisol was prepared for him to try to paint himself in the most positive light possible, and make the trouble, whatever it was, sound like it was Linda’s fault. But she never could have guessed the angle he was taking here. His story was absolutely insane. He really expected them to believe that this stranger, this man that David had brought into their midst was Linda, somehow transformed?

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  The man who claimed to be Linda Alvarez shook his head. “I know it’s hard to believe, Marisol, but it’s true.” He looked into her face beseechingly, his soft brown eyes full of sadness.

  Marisol looked around the room at the other neighborhood women seated on the sofas and chairs. She saw her own doubts mirrored in all their faces. Anna looked downright angry, her usually soft expression molded into something more like concrete, and her arms crossed over her ample chest. She sounded like she’d swallowed something disgusting when she spoke, her voice tightly under control in a way that spoke of the willpower it took to contain her rage. “David, if this is some kind of joke, it’s in very poor taste.”